Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(104)

If he worked for a company, he’d make his repair calls in a company car.

Hodges goes back to bed, sure that sleep will elude him this time, but it doesn’t.

He thinks, If he had enough explosive to blow up my car, he must have more.

Then he’s under again.

He dreams about Janey.





KISSES ON THE MIDWAY





1

Hodges is up at six A.M. on Thursday morning and makes himself a big breakfast: two eggs, four slices of bacon, four slices of toast. He doesn’t want it, but he forces himself to eat every bite, telling himself it’s body gasoline. He might get a chance to eat again today, but he might not. Both in the shower and as he chews his way resolutely through his big breakfast (no one to watch his weight for now), a thought keeps recurring to him, the same one he went to sleep with the night before. It’s like a haunting.

Just how much explosive?

This leads to other unpleasant considerations. Like how the guy—the perk—means to use it. And when.

He comes to a decision: today is the last day. He wants to track Mr. Mercedes down himself, and confront him. Kill him? No, not that (probably not that), but beating the shit out of him would be excellent. For Olivia. For Janey. For Janice and Patricia Cray. For all the other people Mr. Mercedes killed and maimed at City Center the year before. People so desperate for jobs they got up in the middle of the night and stood waiting in a dank fog for the doors to open. Lost lives. Lost hopes. Lost souls.

So yes, he wants the sonofabitch. But if he can’t nail him today, he’ll turn the whole thing over to Pete Huntley and Izzy Jaynes and take the consequences . . . which, he knows, may well lead to some jail time. It doesn’t matter. He’s got plenty on his conscience already, but he guesses it can bear a little more weight. Not another mass killing, though. That would destroy what little of him there is left.

He decides to give himself until eight o’clock tonight; that’s the line in the sand. He can do as much in those thirteen hours as Pete and Izzy. Probably more, because he’s not constrained by routine or procedure. Today he will carry his father’s M&P .38. And the Happy Slapper—that, too.

The Slapper goes in the right front pocket of his sportcoat, the revolver under his left arm. In his study, he grabs his Mr. Mercedes file—it’s quite fat now—and takes it back to the kitchen. While he reads through it again, he uses the remote to fire up the TV on the counter and tunes in Morning at Seven on Channel Six. He’s almost relieved to see that a crane has toppled over down by the lakeshore, half-sinking a barge filled with chemicals. He doesn’t want the lake any more polluted than it already is (assuming that’s possible), but the spill has pushed the car-bomb story back to second place. That’s the good news. The bad is that he’s identified as the detective, now retired, who was the lead investigator of the City Center Massacre task force, and the woman killed in the car-bombing is identified as Olivia Trelawney’s sister. There’s a still photo of him and Janey standing outside the Soames Funeral Home, taken by God knows who.

“Police are not saying if there’s a connection to last year’s mass killing at City Center,” the newscaster says gravely, “but it’s worth noting that the perpetrator of that crime has as yet not been caught. In other crime news, Donald Davis is expected to be arraigned . . .”

Hodges no longer gives Shit One about Donald Davis. He kills the TV and returns to the notes on his yellow legal pad. He’s still going through them when his phone rings—not the cell (although today he’s carrying it), but the one on the wall. It’s Pete Huntley.

“You’re up with the birdies,” Pete says.

“Good detective work. How can I help you?”

“We had an interesting interview yesterday with Henry Sirois and Charlotte Gibney. You know, Janelle Patterson’s aunt and uncle?”

Hodges waits for it.

“The aunt was especially fascinating. She thinks Izzy was right, and you and Patterson were a lot more than just acquaintances. She thinks you were very good friends.”

“Say what you mean, Pete.”

“Making the beast with two backs. Laying some pipe. Slicing the cake. Hiding the salami. Doing the horizontal b—”

“I think I get it. Let me tell you something about Aunt Charlotte, okay? If she saw a photo of Justin Bieber talking to Queen Elizabeth, she’d tell you the Beeb was tapping her. ‘Just look at their eyes,’ she’d say.”

“So you weren’t.”

“No.”

“I’ll take that on a try-out basis—mostly for old times’ sake—but I still want to know what you’re hiding. Because this stinks.”

“Read my lips: not . . . hiding . . . anything.”

Silence from the other end. Pete is waiting for Hodges to grow uncomfortable and break it, for the moment forgetting who taught him that trick.

At last he gives up. “I think you’re digging yourself a hole, Billy. My advice is to drop the shovel before you’re in too deep to climb out.”

“Thanks, partner. Always good to get life-lessons at quarter past seven in the morning.”

“I want to interview you again this afternoon. And this time I may have to read you the words.”

The Miranda warning is what he means.